What percent of modern drek would need to be burned to make the rest valuable?

[SuperBird]

I agree if comic selling is your job, then $2 a pop is not worthless. But to sell them like that in your spare time as a hobbyist, is not worth it IMO.

[the blob]

yeah, but matt, as your WTB list shows, you are going for higher end books and presumably have a higher end budget.

 

a lot of hobbyists would be happy to waste their time on those small $ books if there was a better market

 

heck, looks at how many people here post scans for their $1 book sales? i just can't get myself to do it, i'll type out the title and issue #, that's about it

[SuperBird]

much of the GA stuff I buy is cheap and low grade. I have a small budget. But I hear ya.

 

Just because someone takes time to scan a $1 book, doesn't mean it's monetarily worthwhile to do so.

 

(It may be worthwhile from a hobby point of view, but that's not the thread topic)

[the blob]

well, it doesn't really matter, there's just too much and it isn't going anywhere. while ok shape run of the mill bronze might move pretty well at $1-$3 a pop at shops, shows, ebay, wherever, nowadays (and it took quite a long time) I just don't see it happening for those 90's books which were printed in larger numbers (though perhaps not vastly larger numbers...at least for the generic issue) and kept in larger #s. sure, plenty of people collected in the 70's too, but still, a large % of every print-run wound up getting trashed and tossed.

 

although i still think my bulk exchange for limited edition would be a good idea. i really do think it can hurt current sales there being so much viertually worthless back issue stock. i suppose marvel and DC simply don't want to spend the money to do it, although distributing the overstock to kid-oriented venues could spawn a new generation of readers and pay off in the long-term..they probably don't care.

[MrBedrock]

I say burn it all...

 

Or let it all get destroyed by a hurricane!

We threw about 150 long boxes into a giant dumpster headed for landfill somewhere.

[conditionfreak]

I say burn it all...

 

Or let it all get destroyed by a hurricane!

We threw about 150 long boxes into a giant dumpster headed for landfill somewhere.

 

WooHoo. My Firestorm #1 just went up from .25 cents in value to .26 cents in value.

[MrBedrock]

I say burn it all...

 

Or let it all get destroyed by a hurricane!

We threw about 150 long boxes into a giant dumpster headed for landfill somewhere.

 

WooHoo. My Firestorm #1 just went up from .25 cents in value to .26 cents in value.

Glad Ike could be of service. (thumbs u

[the blob]

i contributed a long box of modern drek to the landfill a couple of years ago that I had been storing in my parents' garage (along with a bunch of other stuff). they thought it would be a good idea to put the box right up near the garage door...where puddles form when it rains hard. genius. one less box of krap for me though. they weren't so bad actually, as many had bags, but I wasn't going to try and salvage 300 or so slightly moist dime books. the guy across the street, who has grandkids aplenty, looked at me like i was insane when i offered him a huge box of comics for them...like "why would i bother taking 3 seconds to ask them if they wanted them"...

 

anyway, 150 certainly is progress. that's like 50,000 books. or like 1/20th the print run of a typical issue of x-men during the peak years.

[joe_collector]

that's not really the point, though. If everyone today knows to save them in as perfect condition as possible, gets them slabbed, etc, then there will be no scarcity- even in high grade- in the long term. Without scarcity, no real value...

 

 

Joe, I don't even know what that gremlin string means. Are you agreeing with me or ridiculing me?

 

Just stating that is a very, very, very simplistic way to look at something as complicated a a collectibles market, where scarcity is only one of many different factors.

 

If what you stated was even remotely accurate, Hulk 181 would be a dollar book.

[SuperBird]

that's not really the point, though. If everyone today knows to save them in as perfect condition as possible, gets them slabbed, etc, then there will be no scarcity- even in high grade- in the long term. Without scarcity, no real value...

 

 

Joe, I don't even know what that gremlin string means. Are you agreeing with me or ridiculing me?

 

Just stating that is a very, very, very simplistic way to look at something as complicated a a collectibles market, where scarcity is only one of many different factors.

 

If what you stated was even remotely accurate, Hulk 181 would be a dollar book.

 

Yes, I was being very simplistic. But I think that my initial statement was more than "remotely accurate". The value of anything, including comics, is primarily decided by supply vs. demand. I guess I should have added the "demand" part into above post, but I thought it was assumed.

[1Cool]

Demand and supply must go hand in hand. Basic economics. Unfortunately the perfect storm hit in the 90's where the supply exploded and the demand (product) was weak at best. Its simply crazy to think how many 90's books were being cranked out!

[the blob]

and the demand (product) was weak at best

**************

 

there was plenty of demand in the 90s...at least initially. but the demand was based on the delusion that in the future collectors would be thrilled to own 25 copies of Spawn 1 and would be happy to pay $5-$15 a pop for them in the process. Granted, for a while there was a profit to be made on Spawn 1, but eventually the numbers caught up and the initial excitement faded. Honestly, I'm not even sure what the logic behind Turok 1 was (well, Valiant made a ton of money I guess) given that shops got stuck with vast numbers of copies they couldn't sell. At least Spawn 1 sold off the rack well at cover, even if it had to do with people hoarding 5-500 copies, and even a couple of years later I saw it selling briskly 3/$10 and prices like that. Turok 1 was seemingly in the 25 cent box a month or two later, along with Magnus 25, etc. and the rest of the insanely overprinted Valiants over a stretch, X-Men 1 and on and on.

[Comicsarefun]

Another interesting question....what percentage of golden age comics had to be destroyed to make them so valuable.

 

What we forget is that 90% of all comics printed in the 1940's ended up being trashed, or turned in during war time paper drives.

 

The same 1/2 million book runs that we saw in the 1940's happened again in the late 1980's craze. The difference was that everyone put the X-Force and Spawn #1's in bags and saved them. Just take 90% of them out of the picture and they would be worth big money.

[SuperBird]

I suspect that the % of surviving GA books from the 40s is more like 1%, (if even?) Most people did not think to save them at all, which is why even random GA titles are valuable.

 

If even 90% of all (modern) X--Men 1s were destroyed, that would still leave you with what, 200K copies? That's more than there are current X-Men collectors.

[the blob]

What we forget is that 90% of all comics printed in the 1940's ended up being trashed, or turned in during war time paper drives.

 

The same 1/2 million book runs that we saw in the 1940's happened again in the late 1980's craze. The difference was that everyone put the X-Force and Spawn #1's in bags and saved them. Just take 90% of them out of the picture and they would be worth big money.

*****************

 

I'd venture to guess that FAR more than a mere 90% of the 40's books got trashed/pulped before they were ultimately saved. I'd guess more like 99% - 99.5% typically. The Disney stuff might have been kept a little more because that's something that could get passed from child to child over the years in a family. Plus, there might have been some inkling of Disney collectability. My mother remembers Disney animation cells being deemed "collectibles" in the 40's. We're still talking about hundreds if not a couple of thousand copies of each book. It wouldn't surprise me if there are [low] thousands of some Dell F.C./Disney books.

 

So...I think you need to take more than 90% of the Spawn 1, etc. out of commission...but as we see from the early (and late) Valiants, a 10-50,000 print-run coupled with decent demand can make some of these books worth the trouble of bagging and boarding.

[joe_collector]

I suspect that the % of surviving GA books from the 40s is more like 1%, (if even?) Most people did not think to save them at all, which is why even random GA titles are valuable.

 

Seriously, take some Economics classes and examine the history of pop culture collectibles.

 

Scarcity has almost nothing to do with GA values, but ATTRITION, AGE and DEMOGRAPHICS do, with a dash of ANCILLARY MARKETS tossed in for good measure.

 

So based on this, destroying 90% of the Spawn #1 copies out there would do virtually nothing to their resale values.

[the blob]

Scarcity has almost nothing to do with GA values, but ATTRITION, AGE and DEMOGRAPHICS do, with a dash of ANCILLARY MARKETS tossed in for good measure.

***********

 

Really Joe? Then how come, let's say various issues of Green Lama sell for much less than other issues of similarly obscure third rate superheros from other third string companies? Could it be because there were/are a ton of file copies of various Green Lama issues floating around? Barks Ducks, despite having a ton of things going for them in terms of collector interest, are not exactly hard to find in lower/mid/decent grades and this is reflecting in their prices, which are generally a lot lower than most of their superhero counterparts. While one may argue that the pricing has to do with genre, I feel comfortable pointing to lack of relative scarcity. Seriously, I've had triples and quadruples of some of those WDCSes from the 40's. I love them, but there are a lot of them out there.

[joe_collector]

Really Joe?

 

Yeah, really, really.

 

A comparable Golden Age comic is worth more than SA/BA/MA because there were millions printed and read by kids, thus creating a huge potential resale market, not to mention the birth of a funny-book pop culture phenomenon, and through an insane set of circumstances that would never happen again, the vast majority of these books were destroyed.

 

Huge Print Runs + Significant Natural and Artificial Attrition + Known Comic Characters = Big Potential Collectible Value.

 

GA is a case study in creating a monstrous readership in the 40's and 50's, then having 90-95% of the original books destroyed. It's a perfect storm and will never happen again.

 

Scarcity by itself has almost nothing to do with it, otherwise the ultra-rare books (like Ian loves to talk about) would be worth more than Action 1 or TEC 27. But they ain't, and never will be. Same with limited print runs, variants and museum editions.

[the blob]

Do you honestly think the resale market of GA nowadays has much to do with people in their 70's who actually read the stuff as a kid?? At best this was stuff that baby boomers (who probably do have an influence on pricing) read fourth hand 10+ years after the fact, though most likely they just read them as reprints even later.

 

Within GA, lack of relative scarcity sure as heck impacts things..hence we have Disney Ducks, which might (probably) have a bigger fan base than the super hero books, selling for less.

 

Oh sure, Tec 27 is going to sell for a lot more than some rarer book ...demand is key. Mickey Mantle's rookie card is going to sell for a lot more than some more rare obscure card, even on printed 20 years earlier.

[joe_collector]

Do you honestly think the resale market of GA nowadays has much to do with people in their 70's who actually read the stuff as a kid??

 

Yes, because they helped create the market, and drive it through the formative 70's and 80's. Without those readers growing up and trying to buy back their childhood during their prime wage-earning years, we aren't having this conversation.

 

Or do you believe that the GA market just sprung up after CGC?